Militants 'kill hostage US soldier'

Iraqi militants shot dead an American soldier they have held hostage for nearly three months, saying he was killed because the US government did not change its policy in Iraq, Al-Jazeera television said today.

The report of the killing of Private First Class Keith Maupin, 20, of Batavia, Ohio, came hours after the United States returned sovereignty in Iraq to an interim government. The report did not say when Maupin was killed.

The US military said it could not immediately confirm whether a man shown being shot in a murky videotape was indeed Maupin, who was taken hostage after an April 9 attack outside Baghdad.

Meanwhile, the father of a US Marine who was reported kidnapped by militants on Monday issued a plea for his release. The captors of Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun have threatened to behead him.

Four other hostages – three Turks and a Pakistani – all face threats of beheading in the next two days in a new flurry of abductions and death threats in Iraq.

Al-Jazeera screened a video showing a blindfolded man sitting on the ground, identified as Maupin by a statement issued with the footage. The pan-Arab satellite station said that in the next scene, gunmen shoot the man in the back of the head, in front of a hole dug in the ground. The station did not broadcast the killing.

Al-Jazeera said a statement was issued with the video in the name of a group calling itself The Sharp Sword against the Enemies of God and His Prophet.

In the statement, the militants said they killed the soldier because the United States did not change its policies in Iraq and to avenge “martyrs” in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Algeria.

Maupin was among nine Americans, seven of them contractors, who disappeared after an ambush on a convoy west of Baghdad on April 9.

The bodies of four civilian employees of Kellogg Brown & Root – a subsidiary of US Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company Halliburton – were later found in a shallow grave near the site of the attack. The body of Sgt Elmer Krause was later found.

One civilian driver, Thomas Hamill, was kidnapped but escaped from his captors nearly a month later. The others are missing.

Maupin appeared days after the attack in a video showing him sitting on the ground in front of armed militants. There had been no word on his fate since.

His abduction came amid a wave of kidnappings in which dozens of foreigners were snatched. Most were later freed, though an Italian and a Lebanese man were killed.

More recently, the kidnappings have taken a more grisly turn with the kidnapping and subsequent beheadings of American Nicholas Berg last month and South Korean Kim Sun-il last week.

Hassoun, an American Marine of Lebanese descent, was shown blindfolded, with a sword brandished over his head in a videotape aired on Al-Jazeera on Sunday. The militants threatened to behead him unless all Iraqis “in occupation jails” are freed. They did not set a deadline.

“I appeal to the kidnappers and to their conscience and faith to release my son,” his father, Ali Hassoun, said at his house in the northern Lebanese port city of Tripoli.

“He is not a fighter. I hope that they will respond favourably to my appeal. May God reward them,” he said.

Another of his sons, Sami, talked with worried relatives, who said contacts were under way with politicians and Muslim clerics in Lebanon and Islamist groups in Iraq to secure the Marine’s release.

“We are trying to send word through all channels that he is Lebanese, Arab and a Muslim,” Abdullah Hassoun, a member of the extended family and head of Al-Safira municipality, told the AP.

The kidnappers claimed to have infiltrated a Marine outpost, lured the younger Hassoun outside and abducted him.

The U.S. military said Hassoun, 24, was last seen on June 19 and did not report for duty the next day.

Hassoun had gone “on an unauthorised absence,” said Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the coalition deputy operations chief in Baghdad, giving few details.

Hassoun emigrated in the early 1990s to the United States, where he gained citizenship.

His kidnappers identified themselves as part of Islamic Response, the security wing of the National Islamic Resistance – 1920 Revolution Brigades. The name refers to the uprising against the British after World War I.

Other kidnappers have threatened to behead Pakistani driver Amjad Hafeez by tomorrow and a group of three Turkish hostages by today unless their demands are met.

The abduction of the Turks was claimed by Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose followers killed Berg and Kim.

The Turkish news agency Ilhas reported yesterday that two other Turks missing since June 1 have been kidnapped, producing photos of the men in custody.

The Turks, identified as Murat Kizil and Soner Sercali, were squatting in front of five insurgents who carry heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

It was not clear when the image was taken. The faces of the insurgents are covered.